On the face of it, the public hearings of the six candidates for the ECB's executive board, president Wim Duisenberg (the Netherlands), vice-president Christian Noyer (France) and members Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa (Italy), Sirkka HŠmŠlŠinen (Finland), Eugenio Domingo (Spain) and Otmar Issing (Germany), were a success.

The candidates were sent questionnaires and responded to them before the meeting, oral questions were put one at a time and most of them were short, and each nominee had to testify for at least 90 minutes before the economic and monetary affairs committee.

The problem was that MEPs were quickly seduced by the candidates. Because Duisenberg had been forced to cut short his eight-year term as president of the ECB at French insistence, he was treated as a fellow victim by MEPs. Their top priority, guaranteeing transparency of decision-making by the ECB and the publishing of minutes of its meetings, was all but forgotten in the rush to praise him.

"None of the candidates addressed the issue of transparency," said Heidi Hautula, a Finnish Green on the committee. "We understand that the bank will need to be careful to protect itself against speculation, but we found their lack of interest quite overwhelming."

When the Dutchman told the committee that the minutes of ECB governing council meetings and voting records would be kept secret for 16 years, MEPs hardly raised a murmur. When he delivered mild criticism of the decision of the Brussels summit to appoint a Frenchman, almost certainly Bank of France governor Jean-Claude Trichet, to the ECB presidency after him, they banged their tables in approval.

"The decision, which has nothing to do with the one to nominate me, to decide now on the nationality of the next president whenever he will be nominated is one which I regard - quite apart from the person who has been mentioned, who is an excellent candidate - as, to choose my words very carefully, slightly absurd," said Duisenberg.

He had hardly left the LŽopold building before Christa Randzio-Plath, the German Socialist who heads the Parliament's monetary subcommittee, published a press release pledging her vote to Duisenberg.

"It would be fair to say that the Socialist Group has an informal 'hit parade'," admitted a Socialist official. "These are, in order, Duisenberg, Issing, Padoa-Schioppa and HŠmŠlŠinen. Everyone is acceptable up to that, but then there is a pencil line before Noyer and Domingo."

Domingo felt the displeasure of the Socialist Group earlier this week when its members on the committee voted against the Spanish candidate on the grounds that his answers were too vague.

"Although he is a very good professor, he does have problems presenting his views and he might have problems taking rapid decisions," explained Randzio-Plath. Domingo nevertheless got by with the support of the other parties.

Noyer redeemed himself with his performance during his hearing on Friday morning. "I can say, with my hand on my heart, that I will be independent. What more can I say?" he told the MEPs, although he admitted to French journalists afterwards that he had been obliged to give a certain "performance".

Duisenberg even admitted to the committee that he had met the other candidates before the hearings to coordinate answers, which explained why they tended to sing from the same hymn-sheet on key issues such as monetary versus inflation targeting, the definition of 'price stability' and when minutes should be published.

While the MEPs' questions were a vast improvement on past performances, many began with long tributes to the candidate. JosŽ Manuel Garc’a-Margallo, a Spanish Christian Democrat, welcomed his "great friend" Domingo to the Parliament, and Catalan nationalist Carles-Alfred Gas˜liba "rejoiced" that a man who had studied with him in Barcelona was joining the ECB directorate.

The only MEP who played rough was British Socialist Lyndon Harrison, who tried to pin down HŠmŠlŠinen on the question of the ECB's accountability and was chastised by other members for treating a central bank governor in such a rude manner.